This is a single archived entry from Stefan Tilkov’s blog. For more up-to-date content, check out my author page at INNOQ, which has more information about me and also contains a list of published talks, podcasts, and articles. Or you can check out the full archive.

Steve Vinoski: REST Eye for the SOA Guy

Stefan Tilkov,

In a new presentation, recorded at QCon San Francisco, CORBA guru Steve Vinoski introduces REST with a focus on those with a more "traditional" SOA background.

Steve explains the goals of the various constraints REST imposes, and the desirable properties one can gain from adhering to them. In a hypothetical discussion with a "SOA guy", Steve addresses various frequent doubts people express when they first look at REST. He explains many of the constraints of REST and the reason behind them.

The video only captures the very lively discussion during the session, but Steve put in an effort to repeat most, of not all, of the questions by the audience, which included industry luminaries such as Sanjiva Weerawarana, Glen Daniels (both from WSO2) and REST expert Stu Charlton (then BEA).

Steve Vinoski, who has also written an article for InfoQ about using Erlang to develop RESTful services and was interviewed on his views on REST, middleware, and programming languages before, is a very well-known expert on middleware, mostly known for his long-time involvement with CORBA. He is a member of technical staff at Verivue and was previously chief architect and Fellow at IONA Technologies for a decade. Over the past 15 years, Steve has authored or co-authored over 80 highly-regarded publications on distributed computing and enterprise integration. Since he has left IONA, he has become a very vocal proponent of the REST style.
Check out Steve’s presentation (57 minutes).

Excellent presentation by someone who really knows his stuff; check it out on InfoQ.